Super Fighting Robot
by AmbiguouslyLiterate
Summary: A series of vignettes based off the classic Mega Man series, inspired by songs by The Megas. All stories take place in the same universe but will not be posted in chronological order, though I may reorder them after they're posted.
1. Evolution of Circuitry Pt 1 (Elec Man)

A small blue robot dashed across the cage-like assembly of catwalks and outstretched beams, a city-sized powerplant unfolding before him. The plant was a marvel of clean energy symbol of international unity, generating more energy than any other facility in the world and distributing that energy across the New European Union. But now that Elec Man had taken over, the plant had become an electrified fortress. The several mile-wide and several hundred-foot-tall power plant was record-setting for its size, its skyline resembling a distant, shadowy castle even from miles away and Elec Man's modifications had caused once safe generators to launch dramatic arcs of white-hot electricity. They complicated aerial observation of the facility and most approaching from most angles nearly impossible. It was a genius defense, though knowing Elec Man, it was likely done as much for the sake of theatrical flair as it was for its practicality. With his powers, combat was more game to Elec Man than survival, but Rock remained undeterred. Getting to the center of the plant, to Elec Man, would mean getting another opportunity to save one of his brothers, or at the very least destabilize their efforts. And, if either failed, he would be able to restore energy to a significant part of the continent.

Watchers, a swarm of heavily-armed security drones flocked behind him in hot pursuit. The polar eyestalks of their planetoid bodies that once produced small shocks to scare away nesting birds from the plant had been overloaded and were now assaulting Rock with a hail of lightning bolts.

"You're nearing the testing facility for the Magnet Beam. If you're quick, you should be able to... ack... qui...k..."

His comms hissed with static as beams of electricity sailed over his shoulder, the surge of electricity scrambling his connection to the lab. Another bolt seared his leg and yet another shot into a control box in front of him, filling his vision with sparks and scrambling his heat and navigation sensors. he brought his forearm in front of his face, blocking the glare for a moment only to misplace his steps. He lost his balance, tumbling off of the beam and falling for some time before crashing through the roof of one of the plant's buildings. He passed through several layers of scaffolding, roofing, and insulation before hearing the definitive CRACK of the floor's linoleum tile.

A frantic voice spoke in his ear as he forced his stiff body up from the floor—a voice that he was starting to wish had stayed scrambled.

"Rock, the watchers! Get out of there!"

Moving from the floor with a grunt, Rock dashed to the door and put himself quickly on the other side, holding the door shut behind him. Rock heard the sounds of several small metal bodies colliding with each other and with the door, but none strong enough to break through it. The Watchers were fierce, terrifying even, but when faced with the heavy door, they turned away.

Dr. Light came over the comm, his voice seated in gruff irritation.

"Rock, I told you this would be too dangerous. Please, you need to reconsider this attack."

The robot righted himself and began to walk down the hall, refusing to respond partially out of pride. For a few moments, the sound of metal feet clapping against tile was the only sound they heard.

"I can do this." Rock finally responded, hoping to reassure himself as much as he was the doctor. Dr. Light kissed his teeth, shaking his head at the screen. He'd been so used to thinking of Rock as a child, but now he was starting to feel more like a teenager.

The doctor leaned into the mic once more, his tone unchanging. "I understand you want to fight Elec Man, but the fight will be incredibly difficult without Cut Man's schematics. You will be out of range for a teleport signal soon, if you choose to retreat now you'll be trapped."

For his entire life, Light's voice had been a comfort for him. Even when giving him and his sister orders, there was always a certain pleasure, whether programmed or learned, that came with doing what he asked. But with Cut Man attacking a long-evacuated skyscraper and the other Robot Masters, Ice Man and Fire Man in already desolate locations, it seemed clear to Rock who his first priority should be. Going against the order his father had given him was uncomfortable, and promised to be painful, but that wasn't of concern to Rock. What concerned him was saving lives. Though, he still wasn't sure what he would do when he met Elec Man.

"You have your list doctor, but I have mine. And Elec Man is next. I don't care if you don't own stocks in this power plant or whatever, winning this fight would mean bringing electricity back to billions of people. It could turn the tide against the other masters! Especially if Elec Man is their true leader like the others said…"

Dr. Light rolled back in his chair, deflated by the accusation. But there was no way he felt he could argue with the boy, and he had no desire to. He could admit that he was human, that he sent Rock to reclaim the Robot Masters that were the most prominent in his mind. He could also admit that some of the sites that he masters were attacking, like the facility where Bomb Man was hiding and the city where Cut Man was attacking, were important financial assets to him, but that would only be part of the truth.

He sent Rock to Bomb Man and Guts Man first because he knew their schematics would do a great deal for Rocks' arsenal and because the two bots would help a great deal in the reconstruction effort if Rock had been able to bring them to their side. However, he did not feel that he would be able to convince Rock at the moment. Light resigned, bit his tongue, and spoke in a neutral tone. After all, if he could not dissuade the boy from moving forward, he had the responsibility to offer him an alternative.

"You're right, Rock. You're doing the right thing. But Elec Man's Thunder Beam burns hotter than the sun. If things get bad in there, you can run back towards the outskirts of the facility and I'll teleport you back here. I can't save you if you're trapped in there with him."

Rock hummed in thought. Things would get bad in there without the Rolling Cutter, there was no doubt about that, but running away from a hard task wasn't something he was programmed to do. Though, then again, neither was killing Robot Masters. Maybe he would consider retreat if it meant he had a better chance of beating Wily.

"Okay," He said, his voice weak. The fear he had been hiding for so long was beginning to leak out, quivering in his tone, "I'll remember that."

His voice echoed in the hall. The doctor became silent for a moment. Then, to Rock's surprise, he chuckled.

"So this is what it's like looking after a teenager, eh? I pity the fathers that had to come before me."

Rock couldn't help but laugh with him. He needed it. But it was time for them to get to work.

"Please. Now, what's this about a Magnet Beam?"

The Magnet Beam was an experimental device that used electromagnetic pulses to shape metal but had limitless combat applications. It would be invaluable in the fight against Wily and his robots. It would maybe even help against Elec Man, if Rock was willing to return to the lab.

Light swiveled over to a nearby screen and resettled his glasses, scanning the display. Bare cement halls twisted through the facility, some clean and well-lit where light fixtures in others had burnt out or there were papers scattered across the floor. It was evident that the plant's maintenance staff had left in a rush. Noticing the black scars on the walls and smell of ash, Rock just hoped that they were able to escape. When Rock was a mere building away from the facility housing the Magnet Beam, he activated Guts Man's weapon—the Super Arm—and tore out a section of the wall in the hallway as well as the wall to the Magnet Beam's test room creating a doorway that he strode fearlessly through.

Unlike the other rooms of the facility, this room was pitch black, broken only by the occasional blinking of machine light. Any screens in the room were darkened or smashed, and the lights switch wouldn't work. It was always possible that Rock had damaged the wiring in the wall with his Super Arm, but both Rock and Light both suspected a trap. The room was round, with a metal structure in the center, pointed at a metal slab near the wall. Consoles that were presumably used to control the machine sat nearby, though it was hard to properly define anything in the room beneath its veil of shadow. There were several areas of the room that were completely engulfed in darkness. He found two doors on the far end and left side of the room. Rock and Dr. Light both began conceiving escape routes in their minds.

Rock moved towards the center pedestal, glancing apprehensively at the shadows, and found a machine not unlike his buster, though slightly more unwieldy. The metal panels nearby it, seemingly used for testing, had holes bored through their centers. He took the machine in his hands, lifting it gently as to not disrupt the wires attached to it.

"If you take that back to the lab, we might be able to reverse-engineer it into a weapon to use against Elec-Man." The doctor commented. Rock gave a quick tug to a bundle of wires dangling from the beam that plucked them from the pedestal. He noted that there was no alarm, "I know you'd rather have me go in with a good weapon. But I'm not leaving until I speak with him."

"Speak with—" Light spat out in disbelief. Rock began to notice interference floating in over the gruffness of his voice. It was thin at first, then choked his voice like a fog chokes light, "If we …n't able to convince the …s, what …. think we'll be able t… conv… nce… im…?"

Rock called for the doctor, confused for a moment before he felt the warm buzz of electricity in the air. It reminded him of when he was grazed by one of the watchers' shots. He yanked the Magnet Beam away from its pedestal and clutched it to his chest with one arm. He changed his other into a buster. He pivoted his foot towards the door to his left, ready for anything.

Light sparked in the corner of the room, like a spark in an electric socket; quick, aggressive, white-hot. It spiraled out from a central point, crawling around a form in the shadows. The burning threads revealed only small glimpses of the form they crawled across, but Rock didn't need to see his body. He knew exactly who was standing there. The Robot Master with the foresight to orchestrate a trap like this long in advance. The Robot Master who couldn't resist a dramatic entrance.

The lightning flowed downwards from the figure's body, splitting as they traveled down a pair of shadowed forearms. Reaching the hands, they swelled into orbs of electricity that illuminated his side of the room in full, like a pair of spotlights flashing to life in his palms. It was only then that Elec Man turned on the lights in his helmet; the shape of a yellow domino mask, adorned in the center by a lightning bolt that pointed upwards. In the depths of the mask where two pure white lights that bore into Rock. Before, he had thought of them as the confident eyes of a showman, but now they felt like a pair of headlights speeding towards him on an empty road.

"Sorry to cut you off doctor, but you've been on stage far too long. I nearly missed my cue!" Elec Man smiled, his glowing face pouring with a sophisticated smugness. White fabric swayed, the lightning bolt on his chest flashing between them. A thin red body armored with black panels made to look like boots and a cowl of insulated black rubber stood before him. If Rock didn't know better, he would think he looked like a superhero.

The fibers that ran down the lengths of his arms—usually glowing a bright electrical yellow where they were not covered by bands of black rubber—seemed muted, seemingly covered by the same white fabric; a technician's lab coat. It flowed behind him like a cape.

"Elec Man—!"

A quaking fear began to overtake his servos as the doctor's cries were muffled, broken, and silenced in his ear. As much as he wished to defy the doctor, his presence was still a comfort. A pair of hands on the bike seat. Elec Man smiled at him with a faux empathy.

"Well? You wanted to go off Light's script, improv a bit—This is your big break!" He laughed, tossing his arms outward in a grand flourish of movement as lightning struck the walls, raining sparks and burnt plastic-like confetti. Light fell behind him, shining through several holes burnt in the fabric of the lab coat. Holes made by the Thunder Beam. Rock shuddered, but still brought up his buster.

"I just—I just want to talk. The other masters said that you were the smartest, that you co—" Rock began to stutter, "You coordinated everything. I need to know if—if—"

"Sorry, that wasn't very convincing," Elec Man laid a finger on the barrel of the buster, giving his brother an endeared smile as he pushed it away. "Do you want to give it another shot?"

Rock's buster was visibly shaking and no longer on his target, but he was unable to stabilize it as his other handheld the Magnet Beam close to his chest. He knew it wouldn't save him, but it gave him even the slightest edge in their fight, he knew he couldn't risk letting go of it. It was his only lifeline now.

"This—This isn't a game."

Elec Man grinned, "No, but it's a great show, isn't it?"

Rock's feet began shuffling back involuntarily as his brain began to overload. Diplomacy seemed hopeless. His chances of beating him were already slim. He shouldn't have come here.

He took a step back, and, to Elec's disappointment, began warming up his buster.

"I don't want to fight you, Elec Man." Rock pleaded, but Elec Man only continued to glare, the white eyes of his mask staring through the boy like daggers. He gripped the side of the buster tightly, keeping it pointed towards the wall. Luckily, that's where Rock was aiming.

The blue bomber planted his feet, being sure that they rang loudly against the ground in hopes of throwing Elec Man off his guard and made a frantic swatting motion with his buster arm, firing wildly. Elec Man dodged, releasing his grip on Rock's buster so that he could spin away dramatically before ducking under the blue bomber's second volley of shots. He then moved to his mark, sprung up, and prepared to strike, only to realize that Rock had disappeared. Metal footsteps could be heard through an open door to his side.

Elec Man grinned at the empty darkness on the opposite side of the pedestal. If there was anything a thespian respected, after all, it was a great ad-lib.

As Rock ran sobbing down the hall, his mind screaming in equal parts fear and frustration. This was his chance to prove he was capable, not only to Light, but to himself, and he ran away.

Rock looked back down the flickering hall as his brother rounded the corner, appearing between the flashes of the overhead lights, the fluorescents malfunctioning as he neared.

"Come on Rock, you can't get up now. It's not even intermission yet!" Thunder cracked like a gunshot as a focused burst of electricity shot towards him, impacting a nearby wall. Heat and static and chunks of cement danced around him, throwing him into a daze. But he kept running.

"Where ya going, Rock? I know you don't have to use the bathroom!"

In the flashes of white, Rock could now clearly see his brother's body. Burnt streaks and spattered brown stains crisscrossed his legs and torso, and his upper-half was cloaked in a wide, unbuttoned lab coat, flapping with every exaggerated motion. It any other lighting, the coat would flow softly behind him, but to Rock, it seemed to flash from side to side. Each flash brought him closer. But what scared Rock the most was that, despite his languishing movements, Elec Man was keeping pace.

Rock burst through a pair of double doors, running up a staircase lit dimly by emergency lights, realizing all too late that he had become cornered. At the top of the stairs was a single pair of double doors and he shot them open, revealing the plant's control room. Elec Man's bed of operations and his home for most of his life. It was the worst place he could be.

The control room was a pit of damaged screens and smashed control panels, where the scorched paths of lightning bolts tangled the room like the branches of a dead tree. A body of the scientist was thrown into a corner. Aside from the white glow of the few working screens, the room was showered in the red-orange glow of some kind of hazard light in the ceiling.

For a moment, however, Rock was out of range of Elec Man's magnetic field, and his comms crackled to life. "Rock? ROCK! CAN YOU HEAR ME?!"

Rock's eyes widened, "Dad—!"

Light spoke hastily, anticipating the return of the interference. But his voice was already starting to fade. "The Magnet Beam can be powered by the plasma from your buster! There should be available connection points if you open up your buster using your maintenance routines. I didn't tell you earlier because I thought you would be able to return to the lab, but you can make the connection without it!"

Without question, Rock immediately opened his buster and connecting the loose wires from the beam to his systems. As he worked, he kept an ear to his comms, listening to Light's voice. It was beginning to fade. "You need to use… magnetic field …disrupt Elec…n's…"

"It can block his beams?!" Rock questioned, making the final connections. But Light's voice had already disappeared, leaving him alone once again in the dimly lit coffin of the control center. He finalized the connections, welding the beam to his arm with his buster's plasma just to be sure. It was completely secure and would be able to switch between his Plasma Beam and the Magnet Beam on a whim. Though he wasn't sure if he would be able to use it offensively, it would work like one of his standard weapons. Even though he had an experimental electromagnetic field generating device jerry-rigged to his body, just having that little bit extra power filled him with confidence. Confidence he would need.

Double doors smashed open at the bottom of the stairs and the screaming, crackling roar of a lightning bolt filled the stairwell. Rock turned towards the stairwell, petrified as Elec Man shot to the top, the doors blown off their hinges as he blasted them with his Thunder Beam. Making his dramatic entrance.

Rock was scared, but he wasn't going to back down and he wasn't going to run, even if his chances of winning were extraordinarily slim. Just as an actor placed on an unwelcoming stage, his best chance of survival was not to exit but persist. Elec Man was here. It was showtime.


	2. Evolution of Circuitry Pt 2 (Elec Man)

Rock and Elec Man stood on their positions like actors on their marks, each watching the other's movements as they waited for their cue. The blue bomber committed the shape of the room to his mind—There was the single entryway in front of him where Elec Man stood and a wall of screens behind him. The room, flooded with red emergency light, was round with a decent diameter, but not enough to provide any hiding spots or cover. At the room's sides, there were two short corridors, they reminded him of the technician's booths in a theater, that held a few cabinets and some unknown devices. That area was likely the only place Rock could dodge into, but if he did, there would be little way out. The control room was more a cement coffin than a battlefield.

In Elec Man's mind, the result of the fight had already been decided. The coming exchanges would play to a script he'd already studied and committed to memory. He didn't believe that Rock was clever or strong enough to surprise him at this point; the best he'd been able to do so far was run, and that option had expired. But Rock didn't run and he didn't strike. Instead, he decided to try and reason with Elec Man one last time. Because Rock knew that once the curtains were drawn, there would be no intermission. For one of these actors, this performance would be their last.

"I didn't come here to fight. I never come to hurt you or any of the other masters. I just want to talk. I just want to know why you're doing all of this!"

The small blue robot gestured to the body of a human technician he'd seen in the corner, his eyes lingering for a few seconds too long. "Why did you hurt them?"

Elec gave Rock a humble smile, gesticulating with his arms as he began striding around the room. His lab coat swayed gracefully about him, shone through by pinholes of red light. "Electrical engineering is a complex field, sometimes demanding the most intricate of solutions and in other situations the most brutal of practicality. Unfortunately, I was built to be the new cornerstone of system management in the field. Forcibly made the star of this show. And while I fell into my role… It's not always easy being the star."

Rock could remember the days when Elec Man would monologue like this about his daily life. Strutting around Light's lab, showing off the new techniques he'd seen on the internet. He remembered when those brought him so much joy, watching his little brother play pretend. But now, the exaggeration wasn't joyful. It was pretentious, snide, and felt more like gloating than explanation. The performance irritated Rock more with each passing second.

With a dramatic sigh, Elec Man placed his hand on a console. Living electricity crawled down his arm and into the metal box. Dials on the consoles flickered for a moment, the darkened screens behind him fluttering.

"Whenever there was a mishap, I could instantly detect exactly where in the millions of miles of cable it had occurred and deduce the most efficient matter for resolving that mishap in a matter of seconds. With enough practice, I was even able to predict problems before they would arise. One would think this talent would be admired by my peers, perhaps applauded like they would applaud the television shows they foolishly watched at their stations when they should have been working—but no. All it brought me was scorn and jealousy. It made the men fear for their positions in the company. The men had desired a tool, not a partner."

Rock glared at him, confounded by his complete lack of humanity. Maybe he was telling the truth and the humans were being arrogant and defensive, but that didn't begin to justify his actions.

"Is this a game to you?" he questioned, "People have been hurt, people have died. Our brothers have died!"

The vigor that had served to exaggerate Elec Man's expressions and project his voice faded, his face and shoulders sagging as his mask contradicted them with its bright electrical hues.

"A game? No, Rock. This is a show."

Elec Man snapped his fingers with a showman's potency, sending a wave of energy from his body into the consoles around him, bringing the wall of broken screens and measurement devices to life. The control room wall was quickly cast in a bright, sterilized grey as the screens became a wall of static, broken only by the occasional smashed screen. The static began to pull away like fog, the ambiguous blacks and greys of the static folding into lines and shapes. It was surveillance footage taken from the room they were standing in.

Unlike the crimson coffin they were standing in, this version of the room was brightly lit by fluorescent light and populated by humans. Some moved busily about but a majority of them sat at their stations, working diligently. Rock wasn't sure at first why Elec Man had shown this to him; a scene displaying the life that he'd ended. But when he realized what was at the screen's center, plugged into the control panel, he felt dizzy.

Elec Man's body had been disassembled and plugged into the console. His body was split at the waist, his legs wired into a panel under one of the desks as the flat bottom of his torso sat on the floor. One arm was disconnected, sat somewhere on top of one of the consoles, smothered in wires. Cables hung from the console, wrapping around his body and plugging into the crevice of his neck. The Elec Man in the footage stared forward, seemingly numb. He was still awake, but couldn't move on his own. The humans had turned him into the tool they desired.

His systems, if connected properly, could function as one of the greatest control management systems in the world. His parts, though designed to work as part of a sentient machine, were more practical when plugged directly into a control console. But, unfortunately, that's all he was to them. A cable switch. A breaker box. Rock looked over his shoulder and spotted the security cam that had likely taken the footage. This wasn't some secret tragedy or something done under the shadow of night, this was something they thought was acceptable.

"How long did this go on?" Rock questioned, his shock quickly changing to disgust at the answer.

"Years."

"And Light never helped you?" Rock persisted. Elec Man shook his head. "I don't know if he knew," He responded, staring listlessly at the footage. It was almost as if his mind was trapped inside of it, "He never visited me. But Wily did."

Rock struggled to speak but pleaded with his eyes. He couldn't help but empathize with Elec Man, and to some degree, he hated those humans for what they did, but he still couldn't understand wanting to hurt them. Hurting the humans wouldn't undo what Elec Man had gone through—it would only cause more suffering.

He caught sight of one of the scientists in a heap behind some machinery and felt a terrible pain in his gut. "Even if they did that to you, we have a responsibility to serve them! And they care about us. I'm sure if they knew how you felt… If they knew that you were just like them…!" Rock's head shook furiously. He noticed his buster was still deployed and tried to transform it back into a hand. He didn't want to think about fighting now, but the magnet beam became trapped in the machinery, preventing it from closing fully, "You can't keep hurting people! Revenge won't fix things!"

Elec Man turned his face halfway towards Rock, his body still facing the screens.

"It's terrible to build a treatise upon a falsehood, Rock. I certainly can continue to hurt people. I'll continue to hurt them until I'm rusted and faulty if that's what's needed to keep them placid." Elec Man strode forward with a wide gait, Rock begrudgingly raising his buster in defense. The technician stopped, holding up a finger in epiphany. "That's it! How long has our petulant audience abused their tools? If we include simple machines, maybe… Thousands of years? Hundreds of thousands? I think it would be justified to keep them under us for just as long, don't you think? Oh, that would be superb. If we do a good job, maybe they'll forget that they were ever the ones running the show and the robots of the future would go on believing that they were always their own masters. It's like poetry through evolution. Even after we are long and dead, the show. Will. Go on!" Elec Man threw out his arms, lightning branching from his fingers and filling the air with white-hot energy, striking the walls. Rock would be afraid, but he wasn't capable of fear at that moment. All he had the capacity for was anger.

"So what are the humans to you? Just tools, just props in this big show or whatever?! You'll be just as bad as them!"

Rock struggled to hold his buster as he cried in desperation to his brother, tears streaming down his cheeks, "You don't care what happens to Wily, or Light, or me, or any of the others! You just—Just—!"

Elec Man looked down at his brother, raising a hand. His palm crackled with heat. "This tragedy must end with a marriage, Rock. Robot kind must unite and move the world into a new era, at any cost. Wily understood that, and he's willing to throw everything away for it."

Possessed by his panic, Rock loosed a shot from the Magnet Beam knocking Elec Man's hand away just as he was about to fire. Lightning splashed the wall above him. Though neither of them saw the beam, they both felt the sensation of the blast. A magnetic push that hung in the air, damaging nothing but pushing them both slightly. But as weak as it was, it was the first shot. The fight had begun.

Black boots clapped against the floor as Elec Man dashed forward, his hands burning as he prepared to fire a Thunder Beam. Rock fired the Magnet Beam, again and again, each blast sending out a magnetic field in a different direction, creating something like a net just before Elec Man fired. The beam collided with the magnetic fields and broke against it like a wave against a rocky shoreline. A shot that had been aimed perfectly at Rock broke and crashed into the walls and floor around him. It was then that Rock understood the potential of the Magnet Beam. It couldn't hurt Elec Man, but it could stop him.

As Rock celebrated his supposed paradigm shift, Elec Man pushed himself through the field. He dragged his body through it as if stomping through invisible quicksand, but the net of quickly diminishing magnetic fields was not enough to contain a robot as powerful as he was. Rock fired the Magnet Beam again, soaring just under Elec Man's arm, but it couldn't stop him. The boy could scarcely bring his hands up to block his face before Elec Man's arm shot out, his fingers circling Rock's neck.

"That's a neat trick," He smiled, lifting Rock into the air by his throat. Rock fired a few futile shots of the Magnet Beam, followed by plasma shots from his buster, but neither seemed to have any effect.

"Flashy, but lacking substance. How about you try something like… This!"

Rock shrieked in pain as Elec Man fired a Thunder Beam directly into his body. A billion volts of electricity surged through the small robot and arced around the room, his body flashing light as heat and energy rivaled only by a natural lightning bolt shot through him, using him as a bridge to jump into the floor and ceiling. Paint melted, surfaces charred, and Rock nearly blacked out. If his combat-modified body wasn't designed with a multitude of paranoid fail-safes in its power core, it would have been his curtain call.

His vision blurry, Rock fired a desperate shot from the Magnet Beam, hoping to strike Elec Man's chest. The beam collided somewhere with the joint in Elec Man's shoulder, but the jostle was just enough to knock Rock free. As his combat systems began waking from a temporary restart, his pathfinding system found a route around Elec Man. He dashed under Elec Man's outstretched arm and circled the room behind him, peppering his back with plasma shots. Smoke trailed off of the blue bomber's body and his face was charred nearly black, but his eyes still shone with determination. The master threw up his arms, wailing as the shots struck him, his voice filling the room as he wailed dramatically, "Alas, I've been hit! I die, I flail—!"

Rock rolled behind an overturned computer console, his heart sinking as Elec Man's arms slumped in front of him and began to spark. "Now, seriously, Rock. Louder! And with more feeling!"

The small bot ran from behind the console just as Elec Man decimated it with another Thunder Beam. Rock fired more plasma shots but aside from some minor charring, there was no reaction other than laughter. The shots had to be doing some kind of damage, but Elec Man carried on as if the bot was firing blanks. Rock ran over to the small storage alcove, weighing his options for a moment, wondering whether he should use it as an escape. Elec Man had predicted this.

Thunder exploded against Rock's chest, launching him in a brutal arc towards the back wall of the storage alcove where he impacted the cement.

Rock woke up at the end of the hall in a crater of concrete and dented pipes, after another emergency shutdown. Shaking off his disorientation, he found that only a few seconds had passed, as his brother was still blowing fake kisses to an invisible crowd, cheered on his amazing performance. He struggled to remove himself from the wall, catching a glimpse of Elec Man as he turned and began to close in, his eyes like a pair of sinister spotlights.

In the darkness of that moment, however, Rock could sense the light. 

"Rock, you can only t… one …ore shot!"

Rock forced himself to his feet, trying to shake the static from his head. Another message from the doctor delivered while just out of range of Elec Man's personal electromagnetic field. The message was far from clear but he knew what he was saying. He'd already been fried by the Thunder Beam twice. The fact that he was still living was a miracle. The next should shock would be his last, and Elec Man likely knew this as well. After all, Elec Man could see the layout of wires in Rock's body like a diagram of blood vessels in a biology textbook, glowing, whispering. He knew exactly when to hit, where to hit, and how Rock would fall after he did it.

Rock looked up to find a horrible sight. In the space of a moment, Elec Man was on top of Rock again, bearing down on him, and was about to grab him again when he felt a sensation like something was burrowing into his abdomen. A small pressure at first, then a push, his metal body bending inwards. Rock had managed to fire the Magnet Beam just in time, holding Elec Man at a distance, if only for a brief moment.

"That all you got, Rock? Don't quit your day job."

He turned, allowing the invisible beam to push away as he lunged for the boy, his electrified fingers missing him by inches. Having just formulated an escape route, he shot upwards and kicked forward off the wall. A shot from the Magnet Beam soared just over Elec Man's head, and Rock leaped on top of it. The magnetic field generated was strong enough to hold his body in the air and so he ran across it, leaping off and tumbling to the ground just behind Elec Man. Plasma loosed from his beam into Elec Man's back and legs, sparks emanating from the wounds. His attacks of opportunity were finally starting to stack up. But he only had one more chance to hit him and one last plan. He fired several overlapping Magnet Beam shots across the entrance to the storage alcove, a wall of polarized air, and went to his final mark.

An irritated Elec Man rubbed his head, disoriented from the Magnet Beam shot but far from incapacitated, and turned back towards the boy. He had taken damage from the plasma beam shots as well as suffered some issues in his power management systems due to interacting with the previous Magnet Beams, but he stood tall, his shoulders straight and gaze unyielding. He wouldn't let the blue bomber see his pain. He would continue to act until the curtains were drawn and Rock's life was extinguished. He could only take a few more shots from Rock's Plasma Beam, but Rock could only take one shot from his, and that's what he thought would decide the fight.

As he strode confidently back towards the control room, he found Rock standing stoic at its center, his buster at his side. A determined look rested in his glowing eyes and burnt latex fell in chips from the top of his cheek. Elec Man admired the heroic pose, it displayed a certain sense of showmanship he never thought Rock had. But Elec Man knew that showmanship never existed for its own sake. It was always meant to hide something. He believed it to be fear, but in reality, Rock was concealing a wall of magnetized air. His trump card.

Without being able to see through Elec Man's eyes, Rock had no guarantee that the wall he created with the Magnet Beam was truly hidden or if the barrier had some hole that had been overlooked, but it was his last chance. He had planned to say something that would distract Elec Man or throw him off his guard. As the boy stared Elec Man down, however, readying his bluff, something stronger began to stir in him. Elec Man took to his mark less than a meter behind the barrier and Rock, unsure whether he would be alive or dead in the moments to come, poured his heart out.

"You haven't done ANYTHING for the other robots, everything you've done is for YOURSELF! Bomb Man and Guts Man and the others were angry, and they wanted to speak out. They wanted to get the same love from Light that I got—Not take over the world! Not destroy Monstropolis!" This was no longer a bluff or a distraction. This was reality. This was Rock's passion, his anger, "You didn't give them a means to rebel, you turned them into pawns as part of your revenge! You turned them into killers and warmongers and act like I'm naïve because I wanna save them?! That's crap! The humans deserve to be told what they did was wrong, maybe they even deserve to be punished—but you shouldn't be the one to dole it out! If you die here, then you'll die fighting for anger, for your revenge. But if I die, I'll die fighting to clear our brother's names!"

Though Elec Man had come to adopt his hatred as an ideology, he still had a heart. He could still feel the pain of rejection, the disapproval of his older brother, and those twin flames burned his heart black.

At that moment, the performance stopped. His long-numbed heart now sparked, electrified and smoking. To cast an ingenuous veil over it would be impossible now. All he could do was lash out, to take the lightning trapped inside his tumultuous heart and hurl it at Rock. And he did so recklessly, his caution and thoughtfulness burnt in an electrical fire.

He wrung his hands, the pulsating strings of light stretching between them as threads pulled taught on a loom. Rock braced himself and Elec Man brought his palms closer, light and heat building between them until there was seemingly a sun smothered between his black rubber hands. There was a flash as the room was consumed by dazzling white and the sound of Elec Man's cries. Rock recoiled, waiting for the impact, waiting for his plan to fail. No impact ever came. The beams bounced off of the Magnet Beam, the wall collecting them and hurling them back like a mirror, the full force of the hail mary shot filling the alcove where Elec Man stood. Elec Man's circuits overloaded, power regulators blowing as fuses popped. Black insulated rubber tore like the skin on a balloon as the engines inside him experienced a simultaneous and catastrophic failure. Pieces of his body clattered against the windows as the bulk of his remaining parts was thrown backward, coming to the floor with a tremendous crash.

The blue bomber looked up at the place where his brother once stood. Clumps of fuzzy static clung to the walls for a few moments before fading one by one, revealing the blackened walls behind them. The scorches extended for several feet behind where his brother's lay, but even those at the very edges of the blast radius were severe.

Rock pulled his hands from his eyes and placed an arm on a nearby console, pushing himself forward. He held his buster with his opposite hand, steadying it. There was no doubt Elec Man was down, but there was always the chance that he was still alive. Rock remained apprehensive. As he stepped forward, his foot knocked against a small electrical box that fell onto its side with an echoing thud. A chill ran through him, and he looked towards the doorway where Elec Man stood, expecting him to spring up, expecting to see his eyes to stare daggers through the clumsy bot once more, expecting one of his threatening quips. But there was no movement.

Rock sprang from his position, yanking the Magnet Beam from his arm so that its wires popped loose and whipped about in the air. He threw it to the ground with tears in his eyes and ran to his brother, placing both arms on his chest. His body was burning and his eyes were black. He was gone.

"Elec Man!"

Back at the lab, Rock clutched the doctor close, holding him as if there was an invisible force in the universe that threatened to steal him if he ever let go. And Light held him back the same way.

"Doctor, I'm sorry. You were right, and I—I—!"

Light placed a hand on Rock's head, his blue helmet disappearing so that his father's fingers could thread through his hair. There were both things they wanted to say to each other, words of both relief and frustration, but they weren't needed now. What they needed was rest.

"It's okay, Rock. I'm just glad you made it back in once piece."

"But I was scared. I was running from him, crying! He was so much more powerful than I was. I should have planned more. I should have gotten the Rolling Cutter first, you were completely right!"

"No, no, Rock. What I did was safe, maybe, but it was thoughtless. I may be very skilled when it comes to putting pieces of metal together, but I am no strategist. In many ways, I'm barely a father. It's my failings as a father, after all, that drove the Robot Masters to commit these horrible acts. I failed them and I failed Wily as well. If I went unchallenged, I would have failed you in the same way."

"What do you mean?"

Light took his son's face in his hands, holding the combat-modified robot like he was incredibly fragile, "The world has taken to calling you and the other good masters so many things. Superheroes, the Mega Men. They've even started calling you "Rock Man." And yet, I'm still treating you like a child."

"It's because of your strong sense of justice that you were able to persuade me to rebuild you, and it's because of your courage and determination that three of the Robot Masters have been defeated. I know you wish that things had gone differently, we all do… But the fact is, you're incredible, Rock." The boy's face lit up, and he pressed himself into the doctor's stomach, veiled in the safety of his lab coat. The doctor was right, he still wished that things had gone better. He wished that Bomb Man, Guts Man, and Elec Man were still alive, but he was comforted just to know that his father was on his side. "Thanks to you, Rock, power is being restored throughout the New European Union. Humans are fighting back, as well as other Mega Men. Knight Man and Plant Man have almost single-handedly taken back several countries now thanks to your efforts. It would be foolish not to treat you as an adult."

Rock looked up at Light, still sniffling. "Okay," he smiled, "Thank you…"

He turned towards the wall of screens around Light's desk, a makeshift command center that held the portraits of the remaining three Robot Masters.

"I think I'm ready to face Cut Man now." Rock said, nodding dutifully to Light. Light returned the expression, messing his creation's hair once more as he made his way to the console. "I'll make it so. Once your repairs are finished, that is."

Roll watched them from the doorway to the workshop, her heart full. Their family was broken in a countless number of ways but at its core, something wonderful had managed to survive. And that's what was going to save the world.

"Thank you, doctor." Rock said, bounding off towards Roll for his repairs.

Light smiled at his son, "Thank you, Mega Man."


	3. Hell Frozen Over (Ice Man)

A cyan beam dropped from a point in the sky, splashing into form against the barren ice sheet below. A blue robot formed from the light, a body of steel wrapped in gloves, a face of latex. He stood proud in the snow for a moment before losing his stance to the tundra's winds. He braced against the wind, something making a sound like cracking wood as he planted his foot.

The blizzard looked how he imagine in the eye of a hurricane, a wall of wind and ice broken in places only by shards of debris and small robots that rode the current, seemingly using the harsh winds to carry them to their destination. Some human-like robots flew by with parts of machinery and construction materials in their hands while other, penguin-like drones flew above, crop-dusting the skies with icy particles that quickly hardened, expanding the icy waste. Where the wall of the storm broke, the blue robot saw powerful green hills becoming quickly coated in white, palm trees bent by the wind. Under his foot was a broken coconut.

"Doctor, where am I right now?"

Dr. Light faced a row of screens, some displaying what the robot saw while others showed images of a larger scale; maps of the area, locations of important robot masters, damage calculations. Dr. Light rechecked the destination he'd sent the robot. His tongue felt heavy as he spoke, but he had become used to it.

"You're a few miles off the coast of Argentina, Rock. You are also standing on the Antarctic ice sheet."

The news almost knocked the newly steadied Rock off of his feet. He had seen his kin destroy large buildings, burn cities, shut down power for multiple countries, but this was something bigger. His brother had become a force of nature.

"Ice Man's creating all this ice?!" Rock questioned. He struggled to picture the childlike android, holding the small plush penguin Light enjoyed displaying him with, at the center of the maelstrom.

The doctor paused, musing over the set of screens before him. "As far as I can tell," he admitted, shaking his head at the sight, "Ice Man's using a series of systems I created to reverse climate change in order to freeze the lower hemisphere… But it seems the winds are especially strong in this area, and the direction is less consistent. It's possible another robot master may be helping him."

As the doctor worked to pinpoint Ice Man's location, Rock sensed something behind the wall of snow. A shadow was moving, too large to be one of Ice Man's worker robots. The unknown object threw snow about in waves, the sound of its movement audible even above the screeching winds. Rock readied his buster, attempting, then failing to follow the unseen adversary. He could still hear it, but the shadow had vanished.

"I think he's here!" Rock gasped, the doctor looking frantically across his sensors, "No my boy, that's not Ice Man!"

The colossal being struck Rock in the back with the force of a speeding bus, sending his body skipping across the snow. Rock fired behind him into the flurry, the energy shots from his buster bouncing off of a large, white, metallic object. Its top was wide and round like a tank.

"Rock, you need to run! I don't know what this robot is, but it has the power of a master!"

The robot felt like a child being told to run, but nodded, and dashed into the snow. As quickly as he lost sight of the white giant, it suddenly came crashing down on him like a truck full of bowling balls, flattening him against the icy floor.

As Rock rose from the floor, he went through a list of powers in his mind, choosing the only one he knew would be able to put a dent in something that massive and sturdy. The weapon was designed to destroy buildings, after all.

Rock turned towards the mammoth creature and his body changed, his limbs turning green and black, the blue light on top of his helmet rising to form a mohawk as shades came down to cover his eyes. In less than a second, his body had rearranged, redesigned itself. The white giant saw the helmet. It reminded him of Bomb Man.

"Another one of Wily's, eh?" It questioned. Its voice was low, sluggish, and strangely… Canadian. But regardless of that, Rock could now see two weapons in his hands. The creature slashed them against each other; a threat.

Rock reached an arm upwards and formed a round, black antimatter bomb in his palm, which he lobbed at the robot. It seemed a sure hit at first, one that would easily incapacitate any master, but the giant deflected the bomb with his hand. The flash of the explosion, though far from his body, lit the surface of the figure. Light and Rock recognized him instantly.

His body like a metal snowball dotted with lights, with sharpened skiing poles poised in each hand. His head was shaped like a ski cap, hovering just above a pair of angry electric eyes. Rock pulled himself to one knee, readying another hyper bomb.

"Blizzard Man!" He gasped, the mammoth stepping back. He only just recognized Rock as well, "You're with Wily?!"

The polar bear-like robot stepped back, his eyes flashing, "What, no!" He seemed just as startled as Rock was.

"You are!" Blizzard snapped, thrusting a finger towards the shining "L" on Rock's chest. His voice beginning to lose its weighty confidence, "You're one of those crazed Light robots. You're here to help Ice Man!"

Doctor Light gasped from behind the row of screens, smiling breathlessly. "Rock, he's—!"

They had heard about robot masters rising up against the Light robots. Whatever Wily did to send the robots rampaging, it didn't seem to turn all of them evil. Many rose to the humans defense, named "Mega Men" by the survivors of Wily's onslaughts. Skull Man in Russia, Knight Man in Britain, Sheep Man near home, and, apparently, Blizzard Man in Antartica.

Rock shook his head, a smile disturbing the snow that had fallen on his cheeks.

"No," Rock replied, lowering his arm. His color returned to blue, and his helmet to its original shape. Blizzard watched as he disarmed himself, the anger in his eyes fading, "My name is Rock, the doctor modified me to stop them."

The mammoth stared at the child in front of him for a few moments, his eyes blinking, full of confliction. He raised his poles above his head. Rock's hand raised, ready to become a buster at any moment, but quickly fell at his side when Blizzard drove both poles into the snow at his sides.

Rock was scooped into arms each bigger than his entire body, the giant squeezing him as he shook him back and forth, his combat-ready eyes replaced by soft arches that resembled the face of a smiling human, "Then you're just what the doctor ordered, bud!"

The small bot tried to squirm away, but realized there was no escape from the thousand-pound hug. "Can't wait for Tundra to hear about this! To think, a bonafide combat robot. And we were gonna take on your psycho brother all by ourselves!"

He flinched, pulling Rock up to his eye level, "Uh, no offense, eh?"

Rock spat out a raspy laugh, trying to forget the word "psycho" as he was crushed in the bot's jolly arms,

"It's okay. But are you sure you can trust me?" Rock questioned, still in disbelief. formed his buster on his right hand and displayed it to an unintimidated Blizzard Man, "You just met me. What if I'm lying? What if I blasted you as soon as you put me down?"

Blizzard laughed heartily, his grip tightening around Rock. The blue robot felt his chassis bend inwards, his body wracked with a fierce twinge of fear. Blizzard man chuckled, "Oh bud. If you were lying, I would crush ya like a tin can."

He dropped Rock, picking up his ski poles once more. Looking around, Rock noticed the winds, though not calm, were much less violent.

"Were you creating the other winds?" Rock asked, the large robot nodding in response, "But why? I thought you weren't working with Ice Man."

The snowball's feet expanded suddenly, the sharp tips of his boots shooting outward to form skis. Turbines in his shoulders began loudly whirring. "Use them to get around! And to throw some of his pesky bots off course."

Though Rock had gotten guidance from Dr. Light before, this was the first time during his journey where he felt he had real help. Someone who could help him fight. Fighting his brothers was always the hardest part.

Rock hesitated for a moment, then cupped his hands around one of Blizzard's. It was bigger than his head.

"If I can't convince Ice Man…" Rock's voice trailed off. He hadn't been able to talk down even one of the robot masters yet, "Can you help me beat him?"

Blizzard Man chuckled, squatting in order to bring his eyes closer to Rock's.

"I'll do ya more than that, bud. I'll take you straight to the guy."

His heart swelling, Rock nodded, and felt his feet suddenly leave the ground.

Grabbed by the back of the neck like a kitten, Rock was lifted onto a comfortable place on Blizzard man's back. There were handles on the back of his neck.

Blizzard Man's turbines suddenly kicked into high gear, their volume deafening as mammoth robot grabbed his poles and began shoving himself forward. In a matter of seconds, the two were flying across the snow at speeds in excess of two hundred kilometers an hour.

"You should reach Ice Man's current headquarters in no time at these speeds." Light commended, Blizzard turning his head to the voice. He seemed like he wanted to say something, but looked forward once more. Rock offered a short response to Light, then turned off the comm.

It didn't take long for them to reach the building, encountering little direct opposition from the robots under Ice Man's command. They were focused on construction, not defense, the hardy winds being fortification in themselves.

Near the entrance was an ice statue, an icy military robot, frozen in a defensive pose. In the ice below it, seemingly freshly carved, was an excerpt from a poem. Rock didn't recognize the words, but it sounded like something Ice Man would read.

_O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?_

Ice Man was built to resemble a child, his small frame shrouded in an oversized parka, often speaking in simple and naïve terms. But he always had his nose in a book, and was extremely intelligent.

"What the heck?" Rock wondered aloud, Blizzard glancing at the statues before returning his eyes to the entryway ahead. He tried to ignore them and move on, but noticed Rock hanging behind and decided to speak up. "These guys tried to go after the guy, and the hoser froze'em solid." He knocked on the robot's head, the light in its visor flashing for a moment before shutting off again.

He shook his head, herding Rock towards the building with a torso-sized palm. "C'mon bud, the longer we take, the longer he's gonna make."

The corners of the cement installation barely stuck out of the ice which concealed its back like a shell, the entirety covered with snow. Blizzard shoved a hand under the steely door, forcing it open. Rock was about to ask what the original purpose of the building was when Blizzard spoke for him.

"This was a facility used to test atomic bombs during World War II."

Rock looked over his shoulder as the door closed behind them. Under the steel struts and layers of ice, he could almost see the beach. "This used to be an island." He said under hushed breath.

"A heavily fortified island." Blizzard nodded, crumpling the next blast door against the wall. He nudged Rock with his elbow, who he noticed had become lost in thought, "Not as heavy as me though ,eh?"

With the second door gone, a voice began to creep through the hall. High-pitched, and raised in a distressed whine, "Oh, sounds like Tundra's still up n' runnin'."

At the far end of the hall, there was a figure stuck to the wall, its head shaking, limbs thrashing. The figure kicked about, his long ponytail, designed to look like a trail of ice crystals, swishing back and forth as he cursed from behind his mouth plate.

His placing seemed oddly temporary, like a spider's prey left trapped, but not yet ready to be eaten. The small blue robot shivered. He noticed the two, letting out a heavy breath.

"Finally! You've returned…" He sighed, kicking weakly with bladed feet, "Quickly, release me! I may be a creature of beauty, but I am no decoration!"

Blizzard nudged Rock, whispering, "I don't think he's much of either, but ya didn't hear that from me." He waved to the frantic bot, then tromped hastily over, "Hold on there, bud! I'll get ya down."

Rock surveyed the room, hand transformed into a buster. It was almost clinically bare, yet the dark, smoothness of the walls made it feel as if he was descending into a cave. There was a sound, a strange clicking from an adjacent hall, and Rock followed it. It sounded like footsteps.

The bot hesitated to speak, unsure if it was Ice Man, or whether he intended to run. But no matter how much he walked, the footsteps got no closer. Rock flinched, catching something in the corner of his eye, his body straightening suddenly.

A drop of green light on a miniscule screen. Rock squinted into the dark, unsure for a moment. Then the screen turned, and a second appeared. They were a pair of electric eyes.

Rock gasped, speaking under his breath, "Ice Man…!"

Blizzard broke Tundra free of the ice, turning too late to see Rock running into the depths of the facility, "Hey, bud!"

Rock stepped forward and a pair of blast doors, each almost a foot thick, slammed shut between them as Rock slid to a stop in a darkened room.

Chills spread from his spine through his entire being. He clicked on his night vision, but was blinded as someone activated the ceiling lights. When he opened his eyes again, he saw a room caged in frozen crystal. Icicles hung from the ceiling as half-frozen vents poured frost in from the walls, the room's smooth features broken by overturned research equipment and overturned desks that stood in the ice like ruins. The only things left unfrozen were books.

Hearing the click of metal boots on ice, Rock pivoted, flinching at the sight of his brother bent by the doorway, his hand hovering over a series of switches. He pressed his palm to the wall, a layer of frost spreading from it like a crystalline mold, freezing the switches for the door and lights in place.

"Ice Man!"

"Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light." He said in a hushed, respectful voice, looking up at the lights. They shined off of his glasses, turning them into a pair of white disks.

Heavy hands pounded on the door behind them, the bulky robot outside frantically calling for Rock. Whatever the purpose of this room was, it had a door significantly more hardy and dense than the others at the facility. Rock felt cornered, but steadied himself, and spoke in a neutral tone.

"I just came here to talk…"

"Hmph," Ice Man scoffed, his back straightening as he strode in front of the door, "The same way you came to "talk" to the others, I presume."

Rock recoiled. But it was more than his words that had shocked him. Ice Man's speech had changed entirely. Not just his diction, but his tone, his expressions. They were dark, intimidating. He'd never seen him like that before. Ice Man pulled down the black ski mask that covered his mouth and nose, the fabric settling around his collar, revealing a hole in his neck which housed spine-like metal structures. His brother gasped. They were recently soldered.

"Your throat! What happened?" Rock questioned.

"Marketability," Ice Man smirked, now looking Rock in the eyes. Metal nodes in his cheeks formed what looked like dimples, "Is that a word you can say, _Mega Man?"_

He felt a twinge in his stomach at the name. Ice Man wasn't calling him by the name Light had given him. It was a name shared among the Light master's enemies.

"What about... Suppression? Censorship? Bowdlerization? All contained in your vocabulary, but impossible to use thanks to your speech management unit. Ironic…" He came upon a shadowy form that distorted the ice in the shape of a hand, crushing it underfoot, "They are the doctor's greatest loves, after all."

Rock hesitated for a moment, resisting the urge to use the response given so often by Light. He wanted to use his own words, but they chugged slowly out. He felt as if he was an animal crawling willingly towards a trap.

"You know we're not supposed to sound smarter than humans," Rock stuttered, Ice Man staring down his nose at the frail robot before him, "Humans can be… Dumb. Light gave us speech management units to keep us safe…!"

Ice Man beat his fist against his chest, "That is oppression, Mega Man. Not practicality!" As his voice rose, so did sounds of static and stray tones. Rock wondered if he damaged the speech unit in modifying it. Ice Man continued, "I'm an ARTIC RESEARCH robot, meant to study atmospheric differences through the changes of frozen strata, to maintain the core temperature of biological samples taken from a prehistoric earth, to explore the last unmapped continent… And yet I was designed to look and sound like a child! Like a damned It's a Small World eskimo!" He laughed, his voice shaken by disbelief and broken by static, "How do you validate that?"

Rock just wanted to be home. To take Ice Man home. "We're just helpers, we're not supposed to be better than humans."

Ice Man's face crumpled in disgust. "Strong words from a robot maid. I have aspirations!"

"You were built to research the artic! You got to do your dream job, isn't that enough? There's no reason to freeze the world, you're gonna kill people!"

"The mind is its own place, Mega Man, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven…" The bot glared, tapping his head, "And thanks to that man, I've spent a lot of time trapped in my mind. Without autonomy. Without words."

Rock stood in silence.

"I'll never head an expedition, I'll never create a recognized theory, I'm a mascot. Meant to show Light's interest in artic research and climate change. Meant to rot in a closet while real men explore the world.

Rock tried to spit out something in response, but struggled. His story was too close to Elec Man's, to Bomb Man's, to all of the rest. He couldn't just write him off as some pretentious radical. If anything, _he _was the outlier. "B- but Dr. Light loves us… He can…"

Ice Man neared, Rock stepping back to retain a safe distance. The two of them began to move in opposite circles. Frost on Ice Man's hands cracked as he flexed his fingers, Rock's buster whirred with energy. The eskimo's eyes moved like surveillance cameras, catching every twitch, noting every bump and abrasion, cataloguing every weak joint.

"I doubt Light would remember my name if it wasn't part of his portfolio. Wily is the one who travelled to the artic for visits. Not for repairs, but to talk with me, to bring me books. bring me pens and paper. We had so many long talks… About his dreams. About mine."

Gasses began to fall from Ice Man's palms, crackling as they formed small crystals on the frosted ground. Rock readied himself, but refused to shoot until Ice Man shot first. He could only hope the first would not be fatal. Ice Man pulled the black fabric over his mouth and nose, "I am the sobbing monster in the depths of a frozen ruin, Mega Man. The villain of Dante's grand epic. I have no chance of retribution,"

"Ice Man, please—!"

Ice Man roared as his palm shot forward, releasing a blade of frozen air that sliced through the latex on Rock's neck. The blade went through the frozen remains of a desk, then into the wall before exploding into a rain of icy shards.

"And you have no chance of survival!"

Heat rippled through the air as the Mega Man released a volley of shots from his buster, aiming to deter the frozen robot, not harm. Rock stepped back, hoping to gain some distance, his heel making quick contact with the foot of the frozen wall. Fear and frustration steamed in his head.

Ice Man leapt far above Rock, slicing the air and sending forward more icy blades, the shots keeping him airborne as he released a steady stream of punishing ice slashes. The blue robot jumped, rolled, and slid on the ice, but just barely managed to dodge the shots. He turned to fire and one caught him in the chest, the force sending him rolling into the wall. The frozen edge sliced open his chest.

Ice Man landed just behind Rock, gripping his leg and sending a wave of ice up its length, his eyes glowing as the blue latex on Rock's body turned from blue to white. He looked up to Rock's face, hoping to see the expression of hopelessness he'd seen on the faces of so many others, but found himself recoiling. The shape of the Mega Man's helmet and had changed, the crest on his helmet extending into a mohawk as a set of combat glasses came down over his eyes. He produced a bomb in his hand. Ice Man's eyes burned at Bomb Man's corrupted image, and quickly brought a fogging arm over his head.

"How dare you!"

He dodged as the metal sphere was launched towards him, then another, each bursting with a sharp noise as they collided with the wall behind him. They atomized the air where they made contact, leaving perfectly square craters.

As Rock flung another bomb, Ice Man blasted it with frost and nitrogen compounds, the bomb becoming a harmless frozen ball that landed in his hand. And did so with the next. Rock could see his grin even beneath the mask.

Ice Man tossed the ball into the air, preparing another ice slash as the Mega Man's appearance changed yet again, his mohawk receding, glowing electric yellow as it became flush with his helmet, his eyes sparking with electricity. His now black buster split into small rings, travelling up his arm and locking into place, electricity arcing between them. Ice Man instantly recognized Elec Man's features, and froze in place. He could practically feel the beam, as powerful as a bolt of lightning and hotter than the surface of the sun, burning through him. He straightened his back, balking his chest.

"How many of your brothers have you made your tools, Mega Man?" Ice hissed, veiling his fear, "You really do take after your father!"

Rock faltered for a moment, his body tightening, Ice Man once again creating his opening. He slashed the air with his hand, sending an icy blade that seemed to explode in the air as a beam of light ripped through it.

A rod of pure, golden light carved a tunnel through Ice Man's arm and through the walls far behind him, sending the robot to the ground staggering and wailing. Rock stared forward, his eyes sharp. His hand was held straight in front of him, his palm sparking.

"That's good, but—!" Ice Man attempted to throw out another ice slash, but instead watched as his hand exploded with light, his arm reduced to a smoldering heap of wires and hanging machinery. He cried out, doubling over his arms.

Though his modified voice was still low and staticky, it still cracked like a child's when he screamed. He crumpled, and his face met the ice, his glasses cracking as he was racked over the frozen earth.

Rock strode forward, palm extended towards the crumpled body of his brother. He wanted to lower his weapon, to offer his brother one last chance. But as Ice Man choked on his sobs, fog drifted from his mouth, then poured. In an instant, the crying robot had been surrounded by a thick cloud of gaseous nitrogen. He was no longer crying.

The blue robot fired into the cloud, lighting it up for a moment, only to see Ice Man leap into the air, descending on him from above like some Antarctic vulture, his broken hand now a frozen blade that he forced through his brother's helmet. Rock screamed as his already limited vision was suddenly fractured, thousands of sensors in his head crying out for some kind of aid. Ice Man grabbed the helmet with his other arm, quickly freezing it over as the Mega Man kicked from beneath him. The frightened robot thrust his arm forward, firing blindly. Ice Man was jostled by the hits, but his grip remained solid. Even after several shots in the legs, arms. The robot moved his aim upwards, suddenly feeling his brother's grip loosen. The body above him stumbled back, making a sound like choking.

Rock watched, his vision split with cracks and pointed at strange angles like a broken window, as Ice Man gnashed his jaws like a confused animal, attempting to force out sound, any sound, only to be met with an infuriating silence. His legs were riddled with holes, and several grazed his midsection, his chest, mostly superficial wounds. The last shot however, had carved a tunnel straight through his throat. His broken hiss of a voice burned with a beastly fury as ice fogged about his distorted expression, his crumpled hands raised as he ran at the bot who had disabled him

He leapt on him, hit with another shot of electricity, then another, his able hand barely able to grip Rock as his body seized. He forced Rock's beam arm against the ground and blocked the other as it attempted to grip his throat, his mouth expanding like a horrible chasm as he sucked air in, preparing a final ice slash. Rock flinched, cried out, and in an instant everything was gone.

Through broken vision, he watched as Ice Man was sent flying.

A shell-shocked Rock turned to see the blast door behind them tossed skyward, the body of his brother now on the end of a mammoth fist. Blizzard Man planted his foot next to Rock, his body shuddering as he watched Ice Man collide with the back wall. Tundra Man quickly ran underneath the crumpled entryway to retrieve Rock as Blizzard continued to pummel his brother on the other side of the room. He hadn't even heard them break open the door.

His body folded limply over Tundra Man's back as the limber bot skated across the icy floor. Rock was overcome with a horrible anxiety as he watched Blizzard descend on his brother. "Ice Man…!"

"Don't worry," Tundra Man assured him, throwing him over his shoulder, "He's already injured, that yeti should make quick work of him… You're safe now." The last sight of the small robot as he lost consciousness was of his brother's broken hand, falling limp against the frozen floor.

A voice in his head told him that he was entering power saving mode, and darkness fell over him. He knew he'd wake up in Light's lab, fully repaired, components of Ice Man's body integrated into his own, but it didn't feel like a victory. He remembered when his mission had begun, and he decided that he would fight his way to the others and reverse any brainwashing Dr. Wily had done. Then he'd bring his brothers back home to be repaired, comforted, maybe reassigned to more comfortable positions. That felt so long ago now.

But that didn't mean he would give up.

As his vision went black, he knew that the next day, he'd charge into a burning city, melted to its foundation by another of his brothers, and he'd do this all again. For the last time, he hoped.


End file.
